1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a sealed battery and, more particularly, to a technology of producing a terminal structure of a sealed battery.
2. Description of Related Art
In a sealed battery having a rectangular parallelepiped shape, its jacket houses an electricity generating element of the battery. Within the jacket, at each of a side of a positive electrode terminal and a side of a negative electrode terminal there is disposed a current-collecting terminal member that extends through the wall of the jacket and is protruded outward from the jacket. Inside the jacket, a first end of each current-collecting terminal member is electrically connected to the electricity generating element, and outside the jacket, a second end of each current-collecting terminal member is electrically connected to a corresponding one of external terminal members. Therefore, electric power can be given and received between the inside and outside of the battery.
In some cases, platy connection members are used to electrically connect, outside the jacket, the second ends of the current-collecting terminal members to the external terminal members as described above. It is to be noted that there is known a technology of interconnecting the second end of a current-collecting terminal member and a connection member by swaging the second end of the current-collecting terminal member to an insertion hole formed in the connection member (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2012-028246 (JP 2012-028246 A)).
As in JP 2012-028246 A, when the second end of a current-collecting terminal member is to be connected to a connection member, air-tightness of an internal space of the sealed battery is secured by compressing a gasket that insulates the current-collecting terminal member from a lid member. At this time, since the gasket compression process cannot be seen or grasped from outside, it is a normal practice to compress the gasket with a certain load. However, according to the aforementioned gasket compression with a certain load, there is a possibility of occurrence of excessive compression or insufficient compression of the gasket due to variations in the dimensions of component parts, such as the lid member, the current-collecting terminal member, the gasket, etc.